A number of wireless telecommunications networks have been installed by common carriers to provide to subscribers a variety of wireless services, including but not limited to telephone service, video services, text messaging service, e-mail service, and the like. The various services may be grouped into broad “service categories”. Each service category roughly corresponds to a group of services, the members of which employ the same fundamental transport technology through telecommunications networks and are handled similarly by the various elements of the networks. Examples of service categories include conversational voice, conversational video, push-to-talk, and “best effort” packet data (“BEPD”).
It is known in conventional wireless networks to handle traffic of one service category differently from that of other service categories. For example, conversational voice traffic may be switched and transported as time-domain multiplexed (TDM) traffic, wherein network resources are allocated for each call or channel beginning at the time the call is established and continuing until its conclusion, and wherein call traffic is delivered directly to a TDM or TDM-equivalent carrier or public network by the wireless network's Mobile Switching Center (MSC). BEPD traffic, in contrast, may be switched and transported in any convenient form at early stages within the wireless network, but is eventually converted or encapsulated by an element of the wireless network into standardized packet traffic for transport through a packet network (which may include internal carrier networks, external carrier networks, and public networks such as the Internet) for ultimate delivery to an endpoint, which may, for example, be another subscriber terminal. The conversion or encapsulation of BEPD from an internal form used in early stages of the wireless network into a standard form suitable for transport over conventional packet networks is typically performed by a Media Gateway (MGW) under control of a Media Gateway Control Function (MGCF).
Although conventional wireless networks handle traffic differently depending on its service category, such networks have not heretofore differentially handled the various types of traffic within a defined service category. Service providers and subscribers could derive a number of benefits if wireless networks were able to differentially process various types of traffic within a service category. These benefits may include without limitation preferential handling of some types of traffic, compression of some types of traffic, measuring the various types of traffic, and applying different rating policies to the various types. However, in general, there is no reliable way to distinguish among the several types of traffic that may be grouped within a service category, and that is especially the case with BEPD traffic. Conventionally, no metadata or other information has been transmitted with BEPD traffic to identify the type or purpose of that traffic. Also, it is difficult, and in some cases impossible, to reliably discern the type or purpose of the traffic by inspecting the data.
Thus, a need exists for apparatus and methods enabling a wireless network to reliably differentiate among the various types of traffic within a service category and to provide service-specific support of some types of multimedia traffic.